{"id":92515,"date":"2026-05-08T17:58:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=92515"},"modified":"2026-05-08T17:59:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:59:01","slug":"michael-jackson-biopic-revives-legend-of-jewish-music-mogul-who-battled-mtvs-color-barrier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/michael-jackson-biopic-revives-legend-of-jewish-music-mogul-who-battled-mtvs-color-barrier\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Jackson biopic revives legend of Jewish music mogul who battled MTV\u2019s \u2018color barrier\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By STEPHEN SILVER<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 About halfway through \u201cMichael,\u201d the new blockbuster biopic of Michael Jackson, there is a scene in which Jackson (played by his nephew Jafaar) and his lawyer, John Branca (Miles Teller), are sitting with the president of his record label. It\u2019s early in Jackson\u2019s \u201cThriller\u201d album cycle, as \u201cBillie Jean\u201d has been released as a single, and the \u201cThriller\u201d video has been filmed, setting the scene sometime in 1983.<\/p>\n

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Walter Yetnikoff, president of CBS records, and Michael Jackson celebrate at the Guinness Book of World Records party honoring Michael Jackson for the top selling solo album in history at the Museum of Natural History on Feb 8, 1984. (Sonia Moskowitz\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Seated in front of several gold records, CBS Records\u2019 head honcho Walter Yetnikoff (played under heavy makeup by Mike Myers) congratulates Jackson on his breakout moment and asks what he can do for him. Jackson and Branca tell Yetnikoff they want just one thing: for Jackson to be featured on MTV, then a brand-new station broadcasting music videos.<\/p>\n

Yetnikoff tells them that it\u2019s \u201cnot possible\u201d because MTV rarely plays Black artists. Jackson retorts that he is a \u201cproud Black artist\u201d who makes his music for everyone, and that he \u201cwon\u2019t be shoved to the back of any bus by MTV or anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yetnikoff says he has tried, and Jackson tells him, \u201cPlease try harder.\u201d So Yetnikoff asks his secretary to get MTV founder and executive Bob Pittman on the phone.<\/p>\n

The executive is then heard on the phone threatening, in colorfully profane terms, to pull all of CBS\u2019s artists from the network unless Pittman agrees to run \u201cBillie Jean\u201d in the next 10 minutes and, subsequently, put the music video in heavy rotation.<\/p>\n

In the next scene, it\u2019s clear that the threat worked. Jackson would remain an MTV staple for many years after that.<\/p>\n

So who was Walter Yetnikoff? And did things really go down the way \u201cMichael\u201d says they did?<\/p>\n

Yetnikoff was one of the music industry\u2019s most colorful figures. Born into a Jewish family in New York in 1933, Yetnikoff became president and CEO of CBS Records in 1975, after spending the first half of the 1970s running CBS\u2019s international division.<\/p>\n

Running CBS during a pivotal time for the music business, he shepherded artists such as Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Gloria Estefan, in addition to Jackson, with whom he began working at the start of his solo career in the late 1970s. Yetnikoff wasn\u2019t known for having a great ear for music, but he excelled at the business side of the music industry and at advocating for his artists.<\/p>\n

Yetnikoff was the subject of two well-known books: Frederic Dannen\u2019s \u201cHit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music,\u201d published in 1990, and his 2004 memoir, \u201cHowling at the Moon: The True Story of the Mad Genius of the Music World,\u201d written with David Ritz. Also, a 1980 movie called \u201cOne Trick Pony,\u201d which starred Paul Simon, had actor Rip Torn playing a fictionalized version of Yetnikoff named \u201cWalter Fox.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cMichael\u201d version of Yetnicoff is heard calling the MTV executive \u201cthat schmuck\u201d \u2014 a Yiddish term in keeping with what both books about Yetnikoff make clear: his Jewish identity was front and center.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heart of Yetnikoff\u2019s persona was his Brooklyn Jewishness. An outsized number of label bosses were Jews from Brooklyn, but Walter wore his ethnicity like a gabardine,\u201d Dannen wrote in \u201cHit Men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, Dannen wrote, \u201cHe would stay late into the night, banging away at the phone, screaming in Yiddish. He shattered glassware, spewed a mixture of Yiddish and barnyard epithets, and had people physically ejected from the building.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein and American music industry executive Walter Yetnikoff talk and shake hands during the 27th Grammy Awards after party on Feb. 26, 1985 in Los Angeles. (Lester Cohen\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A profile in New York magazine in 1990, after Yetnikoff had fallen out of favor in the music world and given up the hard drinking that had caused him problems at home and at work, cited an array of Jewish antecedents to paint his picture.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo cut an appropriate figure in the loud-and-dirty rock world, the shy Brooklyn Jew fashioned an indelible caricature for himself \u2014 the Orchard Street discounter as music-biz superman, a little Mel Brooks mixed with a lot of Jackie Mason, and dashes of Meir Kahane and Captain Lou Albano,\u201d said the profile, by Eric Pooley. \u201cHe could be a mensch \u2014 warm, caring, generous \u2014 but he could also be a monster.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, did Yetnikoff really bring this famous rage to breaking the race barrier at MTV? And did it happen the way the movie \u201cMichael\u201d depicts?<\/p>\n

By Yetnikoff\u2019s own account, the answer is yes.<\/p>\n

In \u201cHowling at the Moon,\u201d he wrote that \u201cI screamed bloody murder when MTV refused to air [Michael Jackson\u2019s] videos. They argued that their format, white rock, excluded Michael\u2019s music. I argued they were racist assholes \u2014 and I\u2019d trumpet it to the world if they didn\u2019t relent.\u201d<\/p>\n

He goes on to say that, \u201cwith added pressure from Quincy Jones, they caved in, and in doing so, the MTV color line came crashing down.\u201d (While Jones, the famed producer, appears elsewhere in \u201cMichael,\u201d he\u2019s not part of the scene in which Yetnikoff calls MTV.)<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the book, Yetnikoff quotes Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was trying to get him to write his book with her at Doubleday, as calling him \u201cthe guy who got MTV to break the color barrier and play videos by Black artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t really know if Walter was bragging or accurate,\u201d David Ritz, his co-author on \u201cHowling at the Moon,\u201d told JTA. \u201cI have a feeling he was being accurate, but I can\u2019t prove it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Jackson family and estate, it\u2019s clear, give Yetnikoff credit for getting Jackson\u2019s music on MTV.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is difficult today to imagine the level of cultural apartheid at the music channels in 1983 when MTV refused to play Michael Jackson\u2019s short film \u2018Billie Jean.\u2019 But Yetnikoff was ferocious on Michael\u2019s behalf and didn\u2019t hesitate to play corporate chicken with the powerful music channel,\u201d the Jackson estate said in a media statement after Yetnikoff\u2019s death at age 87 in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn short order, \u2018Billie Jean\u2019 was added to MTV in heavy rotation, opening the floodgates for Michael\u2019s extraordinary success and also for a whole generation of black artists. Walter forced that to happen, and with that decision, the wall came tumbling down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The family and estate were heavily involved in the movie\u2019s production. But there doesn\u2019t seem to be much evidence for the exact circumstances of the scene in the movie \u2014 Yetnikoff making that phone call to MTV, with Jackson and Branca sitting in his office in New York.<\/p>\n

Dannen told JTA in an interview that, as told in the movie, \u201cthe story sounds fishy to me,\u201d although he did remember an incident \u2014 included in \u201cHowling at the Moon\u201d \u2014 when Yetnikoff \u201chad to coerce Jann Wenner into putting Jackson on the cover\u201d of Rolling Stone, another music industry institution that hadn\u2019t always given fair weight to Black artists.<\/p>\n

Some on the MTV side have disputed the account. \u201cIt never happened,\u201d Les Garland, then an MTV executive, has said, according to the New York Times. \u201cFolklore, man, folklore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garland, in a 2017 letter to Digital Music News, stated that \u201cNo, MTV did NOT refuse to air black musicians.\u201d And indeed, the network had played a handful of Black artists, though not prominently, in its early years. But Jackson was not the only artist to push for more racial inclusion on MTV.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuperfreak\u201d singer Rick James had been pushing for videos by Black artists, declaring in an early-\u201980s interview, \u201cMTV don\u2019t play Rick James, they don\u2019t play Michael Jackson, they don\u2019t play the Commodores, they don\u2019t play Earth, Wind, and Fire, they don\u2019t play Stevie Wonder,\u201d going on to even use the same \u201cback of the bus\u201d metaphor that Jackson used in the movie.<\/p>\n